As our Grants and Learning Manager Jill heads off to new things, she shares some reflections on themes coming out of community-led collaboration with research right now.
As I pause to reflect as I leave the team, I notice that nothing really looks how we imagined it would five years ago, when The Ideas Fund launched. It’s better. It’s more connected. Its ambitions are different, and we’ve probably spent more time in messy ambiguity than we imagined (despite that being the most exciting part!).
I’m also noticing there are some broader themes emerging from the different strands of work, and across the work of people we’ve got to know during this journey.
A movement hopeful of more connection
There are so many community–based folk out there whose experience of research has been dreadful, but who still care enough about knowledge and progress to keep trying to build something kinder and more inclusive. There are also many people who have been pushing at the edges of traditional research for a long time – bringing creativity, compassion and humility to their research practice. We’ve found them at every turn – people whose passion, dedication and sheer force of will are sustaining difficult and sometimes precarious work. Everyone has told us how much they value coming together with their fellow travellers, and there’s also a sense of urgency for collective action to shift the system that I don’t think we can ignore.
Finding new paths
“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
This sector might not be what Audre Lorde had in mind when she wrote those famous words, but she definitely captured a sense that sometimes systems are working in exactly the ways they were designed. Finding ways to work outside or alongside more rigid, historic or powerful systems and structures is where a lot of our partners are finding the breathing space to innovate, and create something which they find more fit for purpose. I’ve seen a lot of mutual sharing about how people are carving out this space, lots of curiosity, and the glimmers of recognition and hope when people connect with others operating outside the usual research space.
The quiet revolution of lived experience
“Nothing about us without us” has long been the rallying call for the Disabled People’s movement, and has been the foundation of authentic, co-produced and community-led work across multiple themes and issues for an age. But in lots of ways this still feels new to the research sector (always excepting scattered academic colleagues that have always put this at the forefront of their practice). The strength of lived experience in knowledge creation, and the ways this is increasingly being valued and prioritised, is a quiet revolution happening around us. Grounding knowledge creation in communities, owned and held by them, is growing as a clear and proud model of research among a lot of the people we’ve funded. They’re finding new ways to build mutual, respectful and deep connections with academics, redefining what leadership looks like.
Relationships are everything
The thing uniting all these themes is relationships – the creativity, challenge, safety and solidarity of building connections with others. I’ve seen how these develop to be trusting, supporting, hopeful and filled with joy and care. We can speak of collaboration, or partnership, of allies – but ultimately working together for change in ways that grow your head and your heart becomes friendship. I’m leaving The Ideas Fund absolutely overwhelmed with the richness of friendship that I’ve seen blossom in every corner of this programme. If anyone’s able to bottle that, let me know.
The Ideas Fund team will be exploring the ways relationships show up across the programme and the work we’ve funded over the last 5 years through the next learning cycle, in partnership with Collaborate CIC. I can’t wait to hear more about these reflections over the coming months.
For now, as I disappear, it just remains for me to thank each person I’ve crossed paths with on this journey. Thanks for everything I’ve learned from you, friends.
